1. To tear or to stretch the ligaments that hold the bone ends together in a joint: Pete sprained his ankle when he slipped on the wet floor of a store as customers were walking in to shop from the rain.

Sometimes when a person sprains his or her joint by twisting it in such a sudden and painful way, one treatment is applying an ice pack to reduce the swelling and wrapping the joint with a compression bandage and taking analgesics or painkillers to relieve the pain.

2. Etymology: from Latin exprimere, "to press, to squeeze out; from ex-, "out of, from" and premere, "to press".